balance between characters' abilities, the response of the controls, its replay value, and variety of features. Dunham even declared it "reads like the bible of fighting game options. Taking a page from every other title out there, there doesn't seem to be a single feature on the horizon that's been left out of GGX2 for fear of the Completists." In spite of the praise, other criticisms vary from its general difficulty to the lack of an online play mode, position of move list in training mode, and the difficulty to perform moves in Dual Shock. D. F. Smith from IGN elected Guilty Gear X2 the best game of 2002, while GameSpot named it the best PlayStation 2 game of January 2003. It ranked fifth in the "GameSpy's 2003 PlayStation 2 Games of the Year" with the staff saying "Guilty Gear X2 is easily one of the best fighting games to come out in the last couple years". In 2004 IGN's editors selected it as the ninth best "Hidden Gems"—fun video games with poor sales in America. Official U.S. PlayStation Magazine included the game on its 2005 list of the "Eleven Essential Fighting Games". In 2007 UGO Networks placed it ninth in their "Top 11 Fighting Games", with its staff qualifying it as the best game of the series. IGN cited X2 had all of the qualities previous games, but "in bigger quantities than we had ever seen", including it in the 28th place of its 2010 "Top 100 PlayStation 2 Games" list. In the same year, UGO also placed it 12th among the "Top 25 Fighting Games of All Time". Likewise, About.com placed it eighth on their "Top 10 PlayStation 2 Fighting Games of All Time", while Complex ranked it tenth among "The 50 Best Fighting Games of All Time", and included it in the fifth place in "The 25 Best 2D Fighting Games of All Time". Furthermore, The Escapists John Funk called it "the best fighting game of the last generation." Other media Music , composed by Daisuke Ishiwatari and Koichi Seiyama, and arranged by Seiyama, was released on CD by Scitron Digital Contents on July 24, 2002. The album was well received by critics. Don Kotowski of Square Enix Music Online rated it 9 out of 10, and said it is "a well executed album and it captures the spirit of the game amazingly." Writing for the same